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Topic: A Small, Dark Room [CLOSED] (Read 4653 times)

As Nathan walked around and inspected the room, a rather small mouse Faunus with tousled brown hair and large ears looked up from one of the machines she was analyzing. Seeing the questions forming behind his eyes as he eyed various aspects of his surroundings, she quickly finished what she was doing with the machine and approached Nathan."Hey! Having a quick squiz, I see?"

Meanwhile, as Clara made her way towards the room full of dust streams, Christina followed her over, sensing Clara was about to ask pretty much the only question one would think to ask upon seeing it."What's back there?"Yup. That was the one.Christina approached Clara, stopping right beside her."That is one of the more vital parts of our current setup. An old military training module that was in development ages ago. Never made it to mass production due to being too fiddly to operate properly, and a few mishaps lead to some unwanted medical conditions. That dust in there? That's all carbon dust of varying densities. If you look riiight up the back there, those glinting pieces are diamonds. Overall, not exactly safe on the lungs.Don't worry though, we've made some modifications to it, so breathing in carbon dust would be nigh impossible.We've not got a name for it yet, so if you think of anything let us know. Otherwise we're going to have to go with Janken's suggestion and I do not want us to reach that level of desperation."Christina had a brief look around checking to see if anyone else was listening to her explanation.

Nathan was rather glad to see the small Faunus come over as quickly as he did, albeit he had absolutely no idea what a squiz was. Sightsee? Quiz? A combination? Add it to the list of questions. For now, he listened to the answer to Clara's - yes, he remembered names - question from one ear while directing his attention to his newfound conversation partner.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that. I was wondering how the chairs worked exactly, or at least the principle behind them, what's in the IVs and the function and mechanism of the carbon dust storm at the back." Although the questions had been asked in a calm and relaxed tone, the throughput of words was a bit higher than one could've expected from such a tone. A keen observer could've deduced, from the slight widening of Nathan's eyes, the sheer amount of the genuine passion and excitement he felt at discussing technology with an expert.

As they entered the main entrance, Abigail would make an active effort to try and not be overwhelmed by the sight of everything, not wanting to bring back the unwanted noises. That, and she had little to no clue as to what the machinery all did, and her interest wasn't towards Technology to such a degree. Instead, she'd just head over to the chairs and go to unclip her helmet from her side and stare at it, letting the other questions be asked before raising her voice to ask "Will I be able to wear headgear while we do this mission? Or will we need to wear something which would make that impossible?" After the question, Abigail would put it to the side as she pulled her shield onto her lap, then place the helmet atop it. Making sure there were no dents or damage to either, it also served to keep her relaxed in the situation, still feeling rather red about the earlier explosion of sound around a bunch of strangers she'll have to work with for the next however long.

Isabelle had her eyes on the odd chairs after they entered the large room. Never had she seen such an apparatus, let alone use anything of the sort. From the way they described it, it would be as easy as sitting down in it, and then they would be inside... However that worked. As she continued to peer around the spacious area, it quickly occured to her that she could hardly name a single object in the room. She would have plenty of questions to ask... if she had any idea where to start. By the time Abigail had asked one of her own, she had thought of something that was at least relevant to their mission.

"If I may ask... How long should we expect to be, uh, hooked up to these machines?" It certainly wasn't the most articulate way she could have phrased it, but it was about the best she could do with her lack of knowledge.

The mouse faunus ruffled the hair on the back of her head."Well, the function of all of them put together is to create a space in which one can directly interact with a person's psyche." She stated, her speech rather accelerated. She had her hands clasped in front of her, and she was looking around at various parts of their setup."This thing is cobbled together in such a makeshift way that trying to explain what any one part of it is for on its own can be a bit difficult. Oh, but don't worry! We've run enough tests to know that it works. At least, with small things it works."She continued looking at different parts of the lab, trying to decide which part of Nathan's question to start with."Okay, well the chairs themselves work by sitting there and not falling over. The principle behind them is comfort. It's the IV drips and the carbon storm there that are the real humdingers. The IV drips are there because you may be there a while, and you'll be unconscious. Well, that's not quite right, but for now, let's just say unconscious. So yeah, if you're there for a long enough amount of time, the IVs and all the other machinery are just to monitor you for any problems, and to make sure you don't wake up dehydrated if it looks like you'll be there for too long. That control panel looking thing over there, that's for Wilson. Janken wanted to do a big dramatic introduction for you guys, so I won't spoil it for him and say what Wilson does just yet, but that's there for him.The carbon room... that's a bit more difficult. To keep things simple for now, that room is basically going to simulate Janken's mind once we hook him up, and you guys will be going in there... sort of anyway... and you'll be messing around with stuff in there to sort of run a stress test of the system. I'd love to go into more detail, but Janken's spent the last couple of weeks preparing this big bombastic and dramatic speech to give you guys about it, and it's the most excited I've seen him since we managed to get the thing running in the first place." She finished her explanation, and looked around, trying to see if she forgot to mention something. She seemed satisfied she got everything.

Janken had made his way over to the chairs to wait for Jane, Wilson, Dave, and Grace. "Whatever's most comfortable for you, really. We'll need access to one of your arms so we can monitor your heart rate and such, but no fuss with the headgear. Looks pretty sweet by the way! I wanted to be a knight in a castle when I was a kid. I wanted to fight dragons and stuff." Janken responded to Abigail, miming vaguely as if he was waving a sword around. It was evident he'd never even touched a sword in his life."Gave up that dream when I realized that Grimm dragons don't hoard treasure or speak in funny rhymes and riddles like the fairy tale ones do. Nor to they perch on or in castles... unless they're taking a moment's respite from pulling the towers off of said castle."

While Janken was busy waving his pretend sword around Christina answered Isabelle's question, while still standing next to Clara."We're... not 100% sure, if we're honest. Maybe about 70%. We're expecting no more than five or six hours at most. We've only ever delved so far, you see... so for what we're looking at doing with this test we're working on a lot of empty holes in our data. But you guys might be in there longer, too. Those IV drips are there to make sure that if something goes wacky and you lot are there for much longer, there won't be any adverse side effects like dehydration or anything like that. If it starts looking like you'll be in there for a lot longer than we expected, we'll check with you and pull out anyone who needs or wants to go."

Just as Christina finished talking, the elevator doors opened, and out stepped five people.The first was a woman. She was clearly a Huntress judging by her attire and how she carried herself. She had a rippling cloak with an almost ethereal look to it, and straps all across her body with attachments for various pouches and holsters. Most were empty though, and she didn't have a weapon with her.The second was a sort of seedy looking guy. He was in a ratty hoodie, cargo pants, and sneakers. He walked with a hunch and his hands in his pockets, giving off the impression that he'd respond politely you spoke to him, but he'd really prefer you didn't.The third was a man in plain clothes and looked like he'd just come from the city himself. Smart-casual and relaxed.The fourth was a woman who pottered out in pyjamas. It was difficult to tell whether she'd just woken up or was just about to go to bed... or if this was just her normal state of being.And lastly Manfred, carrying a large plate of... cheese and crackers.

Janken jumped up energetically"Aha! My associates have arrived! Everyone gather rou- Manfred, where are the cookies?""Ahhh, well... I couldn't find em. This is all we had. It's the good cheese, though!"

Janken's arms dropped to his side as he sighed."Very well. Pop the plate on the table just there. Feel free to have some cheese and crackers, everyone. I'll see if we can scrounge some cookies for after the test but for now... Manny-boy wasn't lying about that cheese. I'd have blown half our budget on that stuff if Christina hadn't stopped me. Well then, gather round the table everyone, and grab some cheese and crackers, if you like"

Nathan intently listened as the Faunus spoke, only briefly distracted by the thought of a Faunus working for Atlas. Not much technical info apart from the IV drips and monitoring equipment, but that was good enough already - besides, he wasn't about to force anyone to spoil things for him. He was patient, he could wait until everyone played their part.

He didn't have the occasion to really be aware of what was being said while he listened to the small-fish woman, but was however aware that something was being said. When she stopped slowly scanning the room and smiled, Nathan understood that that was all for the details - for now, anyway. He courteously thanked her with "Thank you very much for the explanations.", a smile (if you looked hard enough) simultaneously gracing his features. He briefly wondered what her position and/or title was/were before halting his train of thought at the mention of cheese and crackers.

While Janken seemed almost comically disappointed in the lack of sugar, Nathan wasn't one to say no to potentially tasty food. He didn't know what the cheese was, though, which is why he approached 'Manny-boy' to a respectful distance before asking "What kind of cheese is it?", eyeing the small slabs of dairy product on the crackers.

Still staring at the floating stream of dust, Clara listened to Christina as she explained the phenomenon. Initially, Clara was equal parts concerned and fascinated at the explanation. On the one hand, she had never even heard of "Carbon Dust", let alone used it, so her curiosity sky-rocketed at the concept of a new, never-before-seen dust type. However, the health-risks that were apparently involved gave her a small bit of apprehension at what the mission might actually be. They weren't actually expected to go in that chamber were they? Christina did say that it was nigh impossible to breathe it in now, but words can only dissuade so many fears.

However, before Clara's concerns could turn into over-rationalizations, she overheard Nathan's conversation with the mouse faunus, and between the extra details and Clara's own logical thought processes, she starts putting the actual pieces together. The first thing she figures out is that the carbon "dust" isn't Dust, but its just actually carbon dust particles. That would explain why the diamonds are there and not dust crystals. Although if she thinks about it, diamonds are a kind of crystal, aren't they? Anyways, from there, a few other pieces start to fall into place: when the faunus mentions simulating Janken's mind in tandem with being hooked up to IV drips and being unconscious on the chairs, Clara starts developing a few ideas in her mind about how the whole process is going to work. Not on a high-technical level, of course, but enough to guess at the processes.

She was about to ask Christina more questions to see if her guesses were correct when the elevator opened once more and five people stepped out. And while people coming and going from the room itself wasn't necessarily odd in and of itself, the appearance of the individuals who stepped out surprised Clara. She was under the impression that the group of students brought in on the bullhead would be the only outsiders on this project, and these people (save for Manfred) didn't look like they were scientists involved in this project. Though, in their defense, Janken didn't really look like a scientist involved with this project, and he's apparently the lead!

Clara gathers with the rest of the group as Janken instructs, tentatively reaching out for some of the cheese and crackers mostly out of politeness than any real hunger.

Logged

Smokey Emberstone Beacon 1st Year and the Immovable Gunslinger of Team DASE"I've got more than enough firepower to beat you" "You've only got one bullet!" "Like I said, more than enough"

Aurelia Lumen Beacon 3rd year and the Warhorse of Team (TBD) "Lay down your weapons, lest you wish to taste my steel!"

Wabul "Toast" Paka Shade 1st year and the Acrobatic Swashbuckler of Team (TBD) "Hey, I'm gonna go jump off a bridge, who's with me?"

Lucas Meridiem Haven 4th year and the Hermit of Team (TBD) "What's so great about 'bittersweet'?"

Clara Meridiem Beacon 1st year and the Blast Magician of Team (TBD) "No one likes just plain ol' bitter"

August Flare Beacon 1st year and the would-be ruler of the world "Join me, and witness the Brightest Future!"

"Hmm." Five or six hours inside of this... thingy. Isabelle wasn't feeling too excited at the prospect. She still tried her best to remain optimistic. At least it sounded safe, to some extent. The option of leaving the test would be available to her. Some of her worries were eased, yet she remained anxious. She continued to inspect the equipment as the elevator opened, only turning around when they started to speak again. There was some slight disappointment felt by her upon hearing that the previously mentioned treats were not coming after all. Surely, the missing cookies were an omen of bad things to come, she joked to herself.

Perfectly fine with the snack that took their place, Isabelle went ahead and helped herself to some of it. Yeah, it was good cheese. Maybe he had talked it up a little, though. "Thank you," she said to the fellow that had brought them food before grabbing another bite. If they were going to be in there for a while, she had to be ready after all.

Abigail smiled at Janken as he responded with the anecdote before moving her hair to accommodate for the full plate helmet, and started removing her left arm's armour. Starting with the Gauntlets, the Vambrace and Couter were taken off as well, only to finally after that move her sleeves up to expose the inside of her elbow. Being halfway to just relaxing until the needle arrived, she'd contemplate it for a few seconds before getting back up and leaving her equipment there, though helmet still on so that she didn't have to adjust that again.

Heading over to the table, she'd inspect the cheese and crackers, before taking a single cracker with her ungloved hand and slipping it under the helmet, lifting it just enough to get it in her mouth, before moving her hand away again, "Thank you for the snack." being said in a distracted tone, glancing over the group once again as she tries to identify what styles everyone fought in exclusively by their appearance, which wasn't going well for her.

As the group gathered around the table, Janken couldn't hide his exhilaration. He grinned, and jumped up on one of the chairs, so as to look over everyone.He clapped his hands to get the attention of the rest of his science team and beckoned them over to join the gathering.

"Well now that we're all here, and everything's in place, all that's left before we can begin is to make introductions and give you the general rundown of what we aim to achieve with today's test."Janken bent down to grab a cracker and some cheese off the plate."Mm. Pho, infroducfonf firft... GULP... First cab off the rank is Jane." He gestured towards the Huntress with the cloak."Jane is an old friend of mine, and a Huntress with a very unique Semblance. To be honest, I'd very much like to perform some studies on it, but unfortunately the Atlesian government got there first." Janken pulled an exaggerated grumpy face, aimed at Jane. Jane playfully stuck her tongue out in response."I heard through the grapevine that they've had some... interesting results, but that's a discussion for another time. Basically, she can safely detach a person's... I guess their soul from their body?" Janken looked quizzically at Jane.Jane, who picked up on the hint, filled in the blank space Janken had left."I won't pretend to be an expert in the science or mysticism behind it, but that's as good an explanation as any. Essentially, once detached, the soul (if indeed that's what it is) creates an ethereal version of the body it left out of Aura. You'll be able to walk, talk, and touch things as per normal. You body will just stay where you left it. Now I'm sure that will bring to mind a lot of questions, such as 'what happens if the Aura in my ethereal form depletes?' or 'what will happen to my ethereal form if my body is hurt?' and the answer to any and all such questions is 'I'd very much prefer to not find out.' Much of the equipment surrounding you is there to specifically make sure that question goes unanswered for today. Janken?"She offered the metaphorical stage back to the strange head scientist."Well, that sums it up nicely. Now, next in line, the man with the hoodie. That'd be Wilson. His Semblance is technopathy. He can control machine with his mind"Wilson opened his mouth, quite clearly annoyed, but Janken cut him off"Yes, I know it's more complicated than that, but you use so much jargon that even I fall asleep listening. He controls machines with his mind, end of story." Wilson rolled his eyes and trotted off to take his place in one of the chairs."Don't mind him. He's a bit of a grump. This is his community service. Hacked into some pretty important people's scrolls and was found guilty of some... light treason. Anyway, next up is Grace, the sleepy looking girl in pyjamas."Grace yawned and waved at the group."Grace here is a high Telepath. Capable of not just reading minds, but also connecting them, projecting them, and probing the subconscious. Very useful. And don't worry, everyone's got secrets. She's here to connect and project. No reading or probing involved.""Nnnnnope." Agreed Grace, slurring the N and popping the P."And last, but definitely not least, is Dave. Dave here is my shrink. As before mentioned, you'll be running around inside my head. This is the guy who's going to be keeping an eye on things and hopefully making sure that we understand what's actually happening."

"I would just like to state for the record that I don't condone this kind of reckless poking and probing, but seeing as I know Janken's just going to do it anyway, I'm here to make sure he doesn't get himself into too much trouble... again." Dave locked his hands together in front of him, indicating he was done talking.

"Well, that was nice and uplifting. Okay, well, as mentioned before, we're trying to see if we can help people get over things like trauma and such in a more direct way, here. The idea is that if we can interact not with the person, but with their minds, we might be able to help them recover faster. However, in attempting to get funding for our little project, we've hit something of a circular roadblock. We can't get funding to make a device capable of such dives without having proof that it would even work, and we can't prove it works without being capable of making dives.And so, we've had to improvise, and come up with an absolutely genius solution, if I do say so myself" Janken gave himself a smug grin, and looked at the volunteers.

"Jane was the key to this solution, and being an old friend kindly agreed to help out with the tests for free. Thank you very much, Jane!" Janken bowed, and Jane gave a mocking curtsy. "Jane here will... look, I'm just going have to say the stupid thing for lack of a better way of putting it. If you are still willing to be a part of our experiment here, Jane will detach your souls, while Grace links all of our minds to Wilson. Wilson will be mentally controlling the room by feeding my unconscious mind into it. Now for the room... It was initially designed as a training tool for Atlas soldiers. The room could be programmed to make a variety of layouts and virtual opponents. That carbon dust swirling around has a bunch of different densities, all the way to the diamonds in the back there. The room controls the dust to create different strengths of stuff. Basically, punch something that's supposed to be a brick wall, and it'll feel like a brick wall. Punch something that's supposed to be a face, it'll... well, probably not feel like a face, but it'll cave in like one anyway. There are also projectors all over the room to project images onto the objects so that they look more or less like what they're supposed to, and not just grey imitations.Point is, the room couldn't react and reprogram itself based on what the trainees were doing, and humans couldn't program it fast enough. Hence Wilson, who can reprogram it as quick as thinking. Also a bunch of the testers got carbon dust in their lungs which was a problem.... but you lot won't have to deal with that because your physical bodies won't be in there.So with the room able to create a physical space out of my mind, and you lot able to safely enter without choking to death, we come to the part where I explain why I need combat capable people and... Geez, I need some water"Janken did not grab any water. He instead stuffed another cracker into his face while one of the scientists got him a glass. "Gulp.... thank you very much. As I was saying. Combat capable.So, we've run a few tests before this, and I won't bore you with the details. Just the important stuff. We found that... Well, let's say for example we plug Manfred into the device, and you're running around Manny's mind. Let's say for the sake of argument that Manny-Boy has a crippling fear of donuts. Should you come across anything that might upset Manny, his mind may manifest some angry donuts that may attack you. This is all funny and silly, but it gets a bit more serious if say, you come across a memory of Grimm, or anything that may cause him to dream up some Grimm." Suddenly, Janken's posture and general demeanor changed. The joviality gone from his face, and his stance was a bit stiffer."That's half of why we needed combat trained individuals. I'm personally putting myself at risk being the guinea pig here, but that's because I can't condone using people who may not fully understand the risks. Nor can I condone putting my volunteers at risk any more than is preventable. Just as there's a risk of your ethereal bodies getting hurt in there, there's also the real Grimm outside to worry about. As I mentioned before, previous tests attracted some Grimm attention when we were inside the boundaries of Atlas' protection. This is partly because to the effects of the tests themselves, but also a peculiar side effect of Jane's Semblance. For some reason... which I have my own theories on... the Grimm's sensitivity to negative emotions is heightened by the ethereal bodies. If you think of negative emotions like a Grimm beacon, when you're a detached soul, you'll be attracting Grimm in twice the radius, at double the strength. As you've seen, we have security here, but in the unlikely event of a Grimm breakthrough, I couldn't allow untrained civilians to be put at risk by my experiment. You four, I hope, will at least know how to handle Grimm should the need arise." Janken exhaled deeply, licked his lips, and with a clap of his hands seemed to be back to his normal... well, 'normal' self.

"So, last little thing to mention before we get stuck in, would obviously be what your goal is today. I imagine that would be quite helpful.We need to prove that diving into the mind like this can actually have some notable effect, so we can get our funding to research a less scrappy way of performing the dives, so we can get funding to research possible psychological applications of the dives.Our earlier tests showed that at the higher levels of consciousness, we could affect things to about the degree of mild hypnosis. We could, for example, make a person nervous at the sight of donuts" Janken winked at Manfred."At the deeper levels, however, people start to resist being affected a bit, and that's where their anxiety and discomfort tends to manifest aggressive nasties. Early attempts at trying to work around this resulted in some... bizarre reactions, like the panic attacks I mentioned before. That's when I realized that it would have to be my mind the testers would run around in... Mitigating risks and all that.Another interesting detail we discovered was the ability to locate representations of personal metaphor. For example, if you have a happy place you go to in your mind when you need to calm down... well, we could find it in there. The same goes for any... unhappy metaphors. Memories of trauma, or recurring nightmares... anything like that.So to prove that my device can change things for the better, your task will be to dive deep into my subconscious, find my personal, unhappy metaphor, and... well, do something. Try to change it. However it occurs to you to do so. Dave here will be monitoring me, and will be talking to you through Grace's abilities to keep you updated. He'll also be the person to notify if you decide you want to exist the experiment."Janken took another breath, and composed himself."Now like I said, this is my mind. My memories. My personal metaphor. There's gonna be a lot of personal stuff in there that you're likely to see. You may come across people from my past, you may run into several different versions of me... anything could happen in there, and all of it will be personal. It'll be how I see things.That, as you can imagine, is a terrifying amount of opening up to do to people you just met. However, someone needs to do it if we wanna get this thing off the ground. So I'll just ask that whatever you see in there... Don't judge me by the things that happened in the past. Judge me by the person they helped me become. And if you could keep those positive attitudes up, that's not just to help deter the Grimm. That's to try and comfort me a little bit. I'm not ashamed to admit that."Janken stepped down from the chair, and Christina stepped forward."Okay, so if anyone doesn't want to take part in this experiment, now's the time to speak up. We can escort you to a spare dorm room, and you can wait there for the test to finish before we fly you back home. That said... we can pull you out any time, so I say why not have a go?And lastly, if there are any last questions you have before we plug you all in, we better get to them now. If not, make your way over to the chairs please and Jane and Grace will get you set up for our little venture"

Nathan considered the morsels of food with an analytical eye - until Janken called everyone's attention to himself, at which time he abandoned his cogitation and walked up to the chair Janken was perched upon.

For the entire length of the (mostly-)monologue, he listened intently and absorbed the information like a good sponge absorbs liquids. There were a few times he was surprised - the carbon room being a definitely-not-safe-for-people universal simulator of sorts and the method with which he'd use it were quite different from what he'd been thinking up so far.

Once all was said, he just approached the chair to the left of the... control seat? Anyway, the equipment bank to the left of that one. He sat down with little ceremony, ready to get going. He wasn't exactly looking forward to having a needle stabbed into his arm, but readied himself to consciously lower his Aura anyway, making sure his right arm was put slightly further forward than his left one.

At that moment, a thought flashed across his conscious. At the earliest opportunity, he asked aloud "Hold on. What about our semblances? How would they work when we're outside our bodies?"

While taking a few bites out of the cheese and crackers (Janken was right, the cheese is quite delicious!), Clara listened intently to the briefing. Her curiosity overwhelmed what apprehension she held regarding the whole ordeal, and was pleasantly surprised with how much the actual experiment had lined up with what she thought was going on in her head. Of course, she couldn't exactly predict a semblance that pulls the soul out of her body. That's, uh, well, something she probably shouldn't spend too much time thinking about. Her head would be left spinning for weeks.

Then there's the other two semblances, each bringing with them their own host of questions. The fact that the mind-reading semblance was the one Clara had the easiest time understanding probably just goes to show how specialized this work actually is. And she thought her brother had a complicated semblance...Still, the mentions of "light treason" and the ability to probe her mind set off a few red flags in her head. She's a bit more apprehensive about the whole procedure, but her curiosity still gets the better of her. Besides, it's not like she has anything crazy to hide...right?

Regardless of all that, Clara had a few questions regarding the mission itself. "Um, is there a concrete way to tell what's bad from what's good? Er, I guess, what's not hostile from what is? Like, some people think bears are cute and cuddly, and some people think they're terrifying, right? In the outside world they're the same, but inside someone's head, they'd appear different, right? Am I making any sense? Sorry, a lot of this is kind of high-level for me," she asks a bit sheepishly, not really knowing if her question actually got across or not. She makes her way over to the chairs and lets Jane and Grace do whatever it is that they need to do to strap her in, when she thinks of another question to ask, "Oh, also, will we still be able to use dust when we're, like, ethereal? Because, if not, I won't be able to fight. Like, at all."

« Last Edit: November 18, 2019, 10:18:20 PM by ReaperJoe »

Logged

Smokey Emberstone Beacon 1st Year and the Immovable Gunslinger of Team DASE"I've got more than enough firepower to beat you" "You've only got one bullet!" "Like I said, more than enough"

Aurelia Lumen Beacon 3rd year and the Warhorse of Team (TBD) "Lay down your weapons, lest you wish to taste my steel!"

Wabul "Toast" Paka Shade 1st year and the Acrobatic Swashbuckler of Team (TBD) "Hey, I'm gonna go jump off a bridge, who's with me?"

Lucas Meridiem Haven 4th year and the Hermit of Team (TBD) "What's so great about 'bittersweet'?"

Clara Meridiem Beacon 1st year and the Blast Magician of Team (TBD) "No one likes just plain ol' bitter"

August Flare Beacon 1st year and the would-be ruler of the world "Join me, and witness the Brightest Future!"

Isabelle listened intently as the minutes passed. It was a ton of information to take in, and a lot of it worried her. The idea of having her soul taken out of her body was not a pleasant one. Similarly, having someone that was capable of reading minds around made her a bit uncomfortable, even with their assurance that no probing would be done today. Her head was filled with many thoughts that she did not want to share with strangers. Overall, the entire setup seemed slightly unprofessional... Then again, these people were the experts on this, however experimental the 'procedure' was. If things went bad, at least they would have the proper group of individuals to assist them. Hopefully. She didn't believe that she was in a position to doubt them all that much, even if the entire thing made her a little uneasy. Part of her just wanted to get in already so that she could stop anticipating it.

As the others moved into position, Isabelle made her way over to one of the chairs. For a moment, she hesitated, her eyes wandering along the odd-looking seat. With a quiet sigh, she climbed up onto it, taking some deep breaths to try and settle herself. "Stay positive," she reminded herself out loud as her fellow students questioned the staff.

Abi had entirely blanked through the entire monologue and information just after Trauma and donuts. Blinking as her semblance made an Exclamation Mark Sound effect as she returned to the land of the living after being told to get in her seat. Doing as she was told, she'd hunker back down into the seat she had claimed before and watch the others get ready. As her brain tried recovering the information about the semblances and what they did she'd turn to look at Jane, "So what happens about our clothes? Is it sort of like that whole voices are mental thing where they come with us?

Wiping her mouth after to make sure any crumbs from the cracker weren't stuck on her face when anyone looked at her for the question. She'd loosen the breastplate to let in some of the air, though wearing metal around her constantly had left her feeling sweaty, another self-conscious aspect for her to try and keep under control. Pulling her shoulders inwards towards her chest as a side effect of trying to keep it from showing.

Janken followed the procession towards the chairs, the hint of a smile pulling on his face, and was glad that the volunteers seemed undeterred by the long wait or explanation. Or the general weirdness of what he was proposing.He swung his legs up onto the chair nearest and waited for his team to get things sorted.As Nathan did the same and asked his question, Janken wiggled his feet, ever excited to offer an explanation. Clara's question came just before he could answer, and Abigail's followed immediately after.

"Nice practical questions! And with very interesting answers, I feel. You see-""I think maybe Jane and Wilson would be better suited to answering this one. More likely to keep it short, I think" Christina cut him off, giving him a glare"While I'm sure our volunteers would love to get into the nitty gritty behind it all, I think they would also appreciate it if they were allowed to run the experiment and get on home before we all die of old age, yes?"Janken grumbled a slight agreement as the medical staff started hooking up the monitoring equipment.

Wilson took his place behind the seating area, at a desk with several large monitors and computers. He made no effort to hide his amusement at Christina's polite way of telling Janken to shut it."Well, for the stuff I can answer, you won't need to bring Dust in, but you'll still be able to use it. What with Grace's psychic stuff and all, I'll be able to get the room to make a mock of your weapons and armour and stuff, and the psychic link will also give me an instant feed of how you expect things to operate. You expect real Dust to work one way, the computer simulates that happening. Be warned though, the instant nature of the feedback means you can't just make it up. Your weapons and gear will function just the way you remember them, same as clothes and all that jazz. Can we hurry this up now?"

"Yes! Well put Wilson. As for Semblances and such - Ouch!"Christina was giving Janken another glare, and while it was hard to see, it wouldn't have been hard to imagine that she may have also jabbed him with her pen. Wilson suppressed a laugh.

Jane took the center of the circle of chairs as Grace walked around the circle."You might feel a bit of a pressure as I link with you. Don't be alarmed, I do it so you know where I am. You should be able to see what I'm seeing in your head. I'm not going to pry or anything, but if you think I'm going somewhere you don't want me to, just picture a closing door and I won't push any further without express permission."As she walked around the circle, she placed a hand on each of the volunteer's heads, and true to her word a slight pressure was felt, as though a migraine was building. This quickly receded, until all that could be felt was the pressure of a hand, despite Clara having moved on. She strolled rather leisurely towards Wilson as Jane started to answer the questions that had yet to be answered.

"As far as your Semblances go, they'll function largely as they normally would. Those of you with active Semblances may notice that they're less draining to use, while those with passive Semblances..." she gave an apologetic glance at Abigail "May find them harder to control. As for how to tell friend from foe... I'm afraid you'll mostly have to just go with your best judgement on that one. Things don't tend to make as much logical sense inside the mind as they do outside, unfortunately. Though do be careful as best you can... we don't want to make a mess of things inside someone else's head."Jane made her own loop around the circle, placing a hand over the face of each volunteer, hovering just above the skin, before pulling the hand back away. Though... it did not appear to be changing distance. Rather, in turn each volunteer found themselves to be rising off the seat with the hand until they were in a standing position. Examining themselves they would discover a smoothed down image of themselves. The vague approximation of the clothes they had been wearing were there, but the finer details were missing, as though they had been drawn by hand with only a blurry photo for reference. They also noticed a faint tinge the colour of their Aura covering their bodies.Every motion felt initially as though they had pins and needles in every part of their bodies, but like Grace's psychic pressure, this too faded.

"Remember, you need but say the word and I can return you to normal"

"Right, well now that that's all sorted, Grace, if you would please hook me up. And everyone who's still on board make your way to the Room. Wilson will sort the rest, and I wish you all the best of luck. And myself."Grace nodded at Janken, and placed her hand on Wilson's head. As she did so, both Janken and Wilson fell asleep. Grace herself seemed to be not far away from following in their footsteps, and indeed only managed to climb onto her seat before unconsciousness took her.As it did, the volunteers heard a voice in their heads."Don't worry! We're still here. I'll be your liaison with everything outside the room while the experiment is going on. Proceed as you would, I'm just a mental tag along!"In stark contrast to her waking demeanor, Grace seemed to be full of energy.

Jane made her way to the entrance of the Room held the door open. Dave, through all of this, simply stood by the monitors and observed.